A JTBD statement names the job a user is "hiring" the product to do. The canonical format: "When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome]." This builder helps you fill the slots and surface the functional, emotional and social dimensions underneath.
Fill in the three slots to generate.
Weak JTBD statements collapse into "the user wants to [feature we were going to build anyway]". Strong statements name the outcome at the right level — specific enough to inform design, general enough that the user would recognise it regardless of your product's existence.
The three required slots are situation, motivation, and outcome. The three dimensions underneath — functional, emotional, social — surface the whole-person reality that drives behaviour. The functional dimension answers "what's getting done"; the emotional, "how I want to feel"; the social, "how I want others to see me".
JTBD comes from Clayton Christensen (Harvard) and Bob Moesta (Rewired Group). See the glossary entry for the research context and switch interviews for the interview format that surfaces jobs.
Related: interview question builder, mental model, journey map.